Posted on 07/29/2011 4:29:46 PM PDT by DBCJR
QuiBids.com is the largest penny auction website currently operating in the United States. Penny auctions have been around for awhile, but have only recently gotten lots of attention from people outside of the penny auction community.
Penny auction websites attract people to them by promising expensive, big ticket items at unbelievably low prices – for example, QuiBids shows a new iPad, which retails at $499 for the most basic model, selling for $22.54. But this winning bid of $22.54 is misleading. This isn’t the truth of how much it costs to win that iPad.
The way penny auctions work is that you are only able to bid a single penny at any time during the auction. However, at QuiBids.com, you must purchase each 1 cent bid for 60 cents. So an iPad that retails for $499 but was won for the grand total of 2,254 one cent bids (or $22.54) which actually cost 60 cents each means that the iPad just sold for $1352.40.
Though the person who wins the item usually has paid less than retail for what they have received, citing $22.54 as the winning bid is extremely misleading.
So is QuiBids a Scam?
All penny auctions, regardless of reputation, are a bad idea and should be avoided.
First of all, QuiBids.com and other penny auction sites require people to pay for the option to bid, but don’t allow them to bid in increments of their choosing. This means that QuiBids is forcing the price up and profiting all the while.
On eBay, the seller and buyer have the auction monitored by the website, which is the trusted third party. On QuiBids.com, there is no trusted third party. QuiBids is the seller and the auctioneer. It works in their favor – and their favor only – to drive the price up in these small 1 or 2 cent increments.
QuiBids attempts to redeem themselves by offering you the “By It Now” option, which is when you can take the total amount of your failed bids and apply that toward the retail price of the item you were bidding on. Say you bid $80 total on an iPod Nano that cost $150. For the remaining $70, Quibids will sell you a Nano. Well, $70 plus tax, fees, and shipping and handling.
With the added “fees,” tax, and S&H, that Nano will cost you more than it would at Apple, and usually much more than it would at a discounted retailer like Amazon.com or Target. In addition, QuiBids is not an approved retailer of Apple – or any major brand name – products.
This means that if you get the item from them, the manufacturer warranty is void – if it breaks within the first 60 days, you will not be able to get it repaired or exchanged. If you have a problem within the first 30 days, QuiBids will refund the final auction price you paid, but not a single dime of the bids it took to win the auction.
It’s much better to stick to legitimate auction sites like eBay, instead of spending lots of frustrating time and effort on penny auction websites like QuiBids.com.
>>>So is QuiBids a Scam?
When one comes to the point to ask that question, the answer has to be “Yes” until proven otherwise in my book.
Sounds more like gambling.
For a $20 item, it takes a winning bid of about $0.33 for QuiBid to break about even. If that same item sells for $1.00, QuiBid nets $41.00.
They make their money (if any), because people keep trying to get something else for a penny more, forgetting that each attempt costs them 60 times that much.
Disclaimer -- I have not used QuiBid, but have decided to avoid it.
I don’t understand which bidder wins - the one with the most number of bids or the last bidder?
None of the “penny auctions” are actually auctions. Every one of them is essentially a lottery: the more tickets you buy, the greater your chance of winning, and if you don’t win, you don’t get any of your money back.
In effect, all penny “auctions” are gambling and they should all be outlawed.
Exactly right. Those iPads that Beezid.com advertises that supposedly sell for twenty bucks - they actually bring in over $1000 to Beezid. For an iPad you can buy for $500. it’s a massive criminal enterprise, in my opinion.
Total scam for sure. They use fictitious bidders who keep pumping up prices and it costs 61 cents for every penny increase when you bid.
Stay FAR away from that website! I researched them about a month ago and they’re definitely NOT a legit and honest business.
Clarification: The fictitious bidders are either employees that get paid to keep pushing up the bids or robo-bidders that are built into the website’s program. And numerous people have complained about problems with the countdown timer on the auctions. Either it gets a fresh robo-bid right before it times out or it freezes and the auction simply disappears (with no refund) or one of the fictitious bidders is on to win the item and the clock immediately dumps to zero and they win it.
I’d assume most if not all penny auctions use fraudulent means to maximize their profits in similar ways.
Caveat Mother-f’in’ Emptor! Fo Shizzle!
Took a short try on this. I do not understand why anyone would bid with 10 seconds or more remaining. That is what made me decide it is a fools errand. Ultimately, you can apply what you have spent bidding on an item against their retail price and buy the item anyway. If you figure you are willing to pay that price in the worst case, then all you have done is wasted some time, if you do not win the “auction” at some point short of the full price. However it just does not pass my smell test.
Yep, “penny auctions” are gambling websites. And even in a bad economy they are plenty of people foolish enough to play along.
To wit, I was driving through Palm Springs, CA on my way home from Phoenix and could see the parking lots of 3 Indian casinos from the highway. They were overflowing with cars. Expect that most of them were spending their welfare check.
I looked at QuiBids and, after reading how it works, I hit the Back button. Anything that convoluted is not worth fooling with. I’ll stick with eBay auctions, where the amount the winner pays is the same as the winning bid.
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